Dual Boot VIsta Ultimate and XP Home

Ok, so i am bored last weekend, i am presently running Vista Ultimate,
and figured i would install XP HOme editon, i create a partition using
vista disk management, format it, put some files on it, partiton was
just fine, so i put in the xp disk, reboot, does the standard XP thing
copying windows files, now time to reboot, after reboot, i get this
message, missing operating system, well i tried to reinstall again and
again, so i put in the vista dvd, boot, go to repair, repair fails
miserably, so i just figure, new vista install, so i do, get to the
part to partiton, etc, what i notice is now i have 3 partitions, C,D,
and an unallocated space, small, so i remove all the partitions, and
just install vista, no problems, running fine now, what i am curious
about is what the hell just went on,????? years ago, i never had
problems doing dual boots, xp and 98 , its killing me not knowing what
the hell was going on and what happened?? thanks for any help with
this, i am losing sleep on this one LOL

Not sure exactly where you went wrong, but the following page has an excellent article on what you were trying to do, complete with screenshots:

How to dual boot Vista and XP (with Vista installed first) -- the step-by-step guide with screenshots

Hi,
Could be that when you used vista to do the partitioning and formatting XP
didnt like it. There is i believe something different in the structure of
Vista`s partitioning and formating. It may not be backward compatible, at
least with 3rd party partitoning software. Cant rememeber what the
difference is but a search on the web will find it.
I guess you installed XP on an extended partition/logical drive in which
case the mbr would have been overwritten by the o/s and also system files.
This is the way i did it, as it then isolates each o/s from each other.

I have installed XP home and Vista premium on same drive and the way i did
it was to create two Primary partitions and format ntfs using paragon hard
disk manager.
I installed XP on the second primary and Vista on the first.
Just make the partition you want to install O/S on active first.
I also created on the second primary an extended partition and logical drive
and installed XP again for testing software purposes.
So i can boot to Vista / Xp / and Xp test.
You need to use a boot manager like paragon that can select and make active
either partition depending on o/s selection at boot.

Good luck
Graham.... "john p murphy" <jm920@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:t8ip94l7ub6ach921ofse3qcv3rjfnd880@xxxxxx

Here's an explanation of the problem:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/931854
Here's the reference that explaines Vista's new partitioning
format: http://www.multibooters.co.uk/partitions.html
Here's just one How-To that uses VistaBootPro:
http://vistasupport.mvps.org/install...ning_vista.htm
Here's a How-To that uses Vista's own "bcdedit" command:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/919529

*TimDaniels*

"GrahamH" wrote:

No problem glad to be of help.
Its easy to get tied up in knots when things dont work out, i know i do
especially as i get older LOL.
I have no formal IT training but self taught from the first computer back in
the 1970`s and its hard to keep up when your not working in that environment
anymore. I just build & maintain my own pc`s as and when and always do
something more complicated than just a `C` drive plain install, lol.
This is one of the things i like about the Newsgroups and internet, everyone
is so helpful, and giving up there time to help others.
Thanks also to the other replies on helpfull web links.
Good luck John and all,
regards,
Graham....


"jpmurph1" <jm920@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:moqt94dekk4au71vv0f0371vlc1qvggvmb@xxxxxx

The caution I gave was:
"Don't use Gparted to add or delete logical drives to/from a Vista-
created Extended partition, though."

As the "multibooters" site explained, Vista can deal with partitions
created under the "old rules", but adding to or removing logical
drives (i.e. logical partitions) from an Extended partition involves
offsets within the Extended partition, and mixing the "rules" by
using different partition managers to do so may lead to the apparent
"disappearance" of a partition. If you look in the Google archives
of this very NG, there are moans by people who say that their
precious partition has simply disappeared. So the conservative
and safe thing to do would be to do *all* partition management
under the same set of rules. And since "restoring" an image of
a partition is related in some of its processes to creating a
partition, one should do that under the same set of rules that
were used to create the original partition. But since Vista can
access partitions created under the old rules, my guess is that
restoring an image or copying back a clone is safe as long as one
is not creating a new logical drive within an Extended partition.
Why partitions made by VistaBootPro may not be affected, I
don't know. Perhaps it was not tested for creation and deletion
of logical drives within an Extended partition that contained
Vista-created logical drives. To add to the confusion, there are
cloning utilities with recent versions that claim compatibility with
Vista new offset rules. BootItNG and Casper are a couple that
make that claim. They may or may not work in all scenarios.
The safest thing to do would to just use something like Gparted
to create all the partitions because all partitioning utilities can
deal with the old rules. In the case of my Dell laptop with Vista
pre-installed, Vista was on a Primary partition with the old offset,
and a proprietary app was on a logical drive in an Extended partition
that had the new internal offset. I nuked the entire Extended partition
and kept the Primary partition, and I've cloned and restored Vista
several times using an old-rules Casper with no problems. If you
can't tell whether your pre-installed Vista has the old offset or the
new 2,048-sector offset, and you are willing to re-install Vista, I'd
say to just re-install Vista in a partition created under the old rules.

*TimDaniels*

"Daave" wroote:

Thanks so much for your explanation; it's starting to make sense to me.
:-)

The laptop belongs to my sister-in-law. It's an Acer 5100-3357. It came
preinstalled with Vista Home Premium, which she detests. I'd like to
create a dual-boot system for her with XP Home. This way, she can use XP
to her heart's content but still have the option to use Vista. Using
Disk Management, I see there are three primary partitions. One is the
hidden 8.79 GB hidden recovery partition. Then there is C:, which is the
boot drive with Vista (51.65 GB). Finally, there's D:, a 51.36 GB data
partition. Since there are no extended partitions, I suppose I could use
Vista's partitioning utility. Or Gparted. So, what's your recommendation
for her particular setup?


"Timothy Daniels" <NoSpam@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:OYsV%23Rw$IHA.3964@xxxxxx

What I would do is get rid of that recovery partition. If it were to
be used, it would wipe out any new partitions and obliterate XP.
Deleting it would also free up a Primary partition. If Disk Management
can't delete it, try Gparted. If Gparted can't do it, change the
partition type code to hex 07 using Cute Partition Manager (a free
download .iso file to make a live CD). If you have an external
hard drive handy, you may also want to clone Vista before deleting
the recovery partition, then delete the Vista partition, then copy the
Vista clone back into the newly available unallocated space that
had been freed up. Either in the process of making a new partition
for Vista, or after Vista had been copied back, you could shrink
the Vista partition using either Disk Management or Gparted to
juggle the relative sizes of the Vista and XP partition. You may want
to discuss the uses intended for the large data partition. If your
sister doesn't have a lot of video or multi-media files to edit or keep
on disk, you may want to copy those current files elsewhere tempor-
arily while you adjust the size of the data partition as well. Since you
would be working with just Primary partitions, I don't think you'd
have any problems using Vista's Disk Management. Gut if you do
have Gparted handy, you'll save a *little* bit of space using the old
start-of-data offset instead of the larger 2,048-sector offset of
Vista.

What hasn't been mentioned, yet, in this thread is that Vista and XP
will step on each other's restore points. There is a registry hack to
get around that, but if your sister just backs up her files religiously,
restore points would be superfluous, anyway. Here's more info on
that: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/926185 .

Here's info on dual-booting Vista and XP with XP installed 2nd
and using Vista's bcdedit to adjust Vista's BCD:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/926185 ,
http://windowssecrets.com/2008/02/14...t-Vista-and-XP

Here's info on doing the same thing, but using VistaBootPro to
adjust Vista's BCD:
http://vistasupport.mvps.org/install...ning_vista.htm .

Here's info on doing the same thing, but using EasyBCD to adjust
Vista's BCD:
http://vistasupport.mvps.org/install...ning_vista.htm

Good luck!

*TimDaniels*


"Daave" wrote:

What I would do is get rid of that recovery partition. If it were to
be used, it would wipe out any new partitions and obliterate XP.
Deleting it would also free up a Primary partition. If Disk Management
can't delete it, try Gparted. If Gparted can't do it, change the
partition type code to hex 07 using Cute Partition Manager (a free
download .iso file to make a live CD). If you have an external
hard drive handy, you may also want to clone Vista before deleting
the recovery partition, then delete the Vista partition, then copy the
Vista clone back into the newly available unallocated space that
had been freed up. Either in the process of making a new partition
for Vista, or after Vista had been copied back, you could shrink
the Vista partition using either Disk Management or Gparted to
juggle the relative sizes of the Vista and XP partition. You may want
to discuss the uses intended for the large data partition. If your
sister doesn't have a lot of video or multi-media files to edit or keep
on disk, you may want to copy those current files elsewhere tempor-
arily while you adjust the size of the data partition as well. Since you
would be working with just Primary partitions, I don't think you'd
have any problems using Vista's Disk Management. Gut if you do
have Gparted handy, you'll save a *little* bit of space using the old
start-of-data offset instead of the larger 2,048-sector offset of
Vista.

What hasn't been mentioned, yet, in this thread is that Vista and XP
will step on each other's restore points. There is a registry hack to
get around that, but if your sister just backs up her files religiously,
restore points would be superfluous, anyway. Here's more info on
that: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/926185 .

Here's info on dual-booting Vista and XP with XP installed 2nd
and using Vista's bcdedit to adjust Vista's BCD:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/926185 ,
http://windowssecrets.com/2008/02/14...t-Vista-and-XP

Here's info on doing the same thing, but using VistaBootPro to
adjust Vista's BCD:
http://vistasupport.mvps.org/install...ning_vista.htm .

Here's info on doing the same thing, but using EasyBCD to adjust
Vista's BCD:
http://vistasupport.mvps.org/install...ning_vista.htm

Good luck!

*TimDaniels*


"Daave" wrote:

Tim, thanks a million for all the info. Since my sister-in-law told me
she had no intention of using Vista whatsoever and she is anything but a
power user (basically just light Web browsing), I decided to just
perform a clean install of XP.

However, I am keeping all your pointers becauase in the near future, I
intend to dual boot XP and Vista, so thanks once more.

--
Dave


"Timothy Daniels" <NoSpam@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:e9N21x2$IHA.4064@xxxxxx